I think it was the editing that made the 'teleporting' more jarring (speaking as one who hasn't touched a single book):

Spoiler:

We get a grand scheme of taking Casterly Rock narrated by Tyrion, then suddenly a cut to a naval battle (which, afterwards, left me wondering whether it took place at casterly rock or at highgarden), then suddenly a cut to highgarden getting completely obliterated by the lannister army.If highgarden was so quick and easy to take, why hadn't they done it before? Like, from day one Cersei was on the throne.

Also, has Varys lost all his birds in the west? Since every move Daenerys makes ends in a massacre or at least a thorough disadvantage.

If highgarden was so quick and easy to take, why hadn't they done it before? Like, from day one Cersei was on the throne.

Spoiler:

The Tyrells weren't an enemy to the throne until this season. Indeed: Margery was the queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Politically, it only makes sense to attack the Tyrells after they sided with barbarians and outsiders. In any case, I think the attack on Highgarden was pretty fast, all things considered.

The attack on Highgarden is literally Cersei's first military action. Since the attack by Euron Greyjoy wasn't technically a command. It was a "gift". So... this was about as quick as what could make sense.

Flumble wrote:

Spoiler:

Also, has Varys lost all his birds in the west? Since every move Daenerys makes ends in a massacre or at least a thorough disadvantage.

Spoiler:

I've been assuming that Qyburn has taken over Varys's spy circle in the Seven Kingdoms. I'm not entirely sure how Varys can help without his "little birds", especially because Varys is basically a spymaster. A spymaster without any spies isn't... very useful.

I wonder how Varys will contribute to Danny. Varys clearly was able to get Dorne and the Tyrells on Danny's side, but that clearly wasn't... very useful...

I've been assuming that Qyburn has taken over Varys's spy circle in the Seven Kingdoms. I'm not entirely sure how Varys can help without his "little birds", especially because Varys is basically a spymaster. A spymaster without any spies isn't... very useful.

I wonder how Varys will contribute to Danny. Varys clearly was able to get Dorne and the Tyrells on Danny's side, but that clearly wasn't... very useful...

Spoiler:

Qyburn definitely took over Varys spy network in the books. I don't recall if the same was ever mentioned in the show or not.

I suspect Varys is going to end up as one of the characters that kind of end up being vestigial to the plot as things start to coalesce and plotlines are trimmed down. Similar to people like Davos, Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion (!), Meera, Littlefinger (!!)... It may be that some of these characters have a role to play later in the series, but I wouldn't be surprised if some (or many) of them end up doing very little for a couple episodes then end up dying.

I don't think there's really an issue with Jaime getting to Highgarden. That's completely separate from other parts and we don't know when that happened with respect to any of the sea battles or the like.

The big problem is how Euron captured Yara, got back to King's Landing, presented her to the Queen and still got to Casterly Rock in time to sink the Unsullied fleet. For one, Yara was going to Sunspear which is on the same route you'd take to Casterly Rock, so why didn't Euron catch the WHOLE fleet there? If they didn't leave at the same time, why? And why wouldn't the Unsullied, who had a MUCH longer trip, not have left first? The only way the timeline works now is if Yara somehow left before the Unsullied, by a fairly significant amount.

Of course there's also the issue of Daenerys having a large fleet that could have just blockaded Blackwater Bay from Dragonstone and how Euron managed to get by them...

I've been assuming that Qyburn has taken over Varys's spy circle in the Seven Kingdoms. I'm not entirely sure how Varys can help without his "little birds", especially because Varys is basically a spymaster. A spymaster without any spies isn't... very useful.

I wonder how Varys will contribute to Danny. Varys clearly was able to get Dorne and the Tyrells on Danny's side, but that clearly wasn't... very useful...

Spoiler:

Qyburn definitely took over Varys spy network in the books. I don't recall if the same was ever mentioned in the show or not.

I suspect Varys is going to end up as one of the characters that kind of end up being vestigial to the plot as things start to coalesce and plotlines are trimmed down. Similar to people like Davos, Jaime, Brienne, Tyrion (!), Meera, Littlefinger (!!)... It may be that some of these characters have a role to play later in the series, but I wouldn't be surprised if some (or many) of them end up doing very little for a couple episodes then end up dying.

Spoiler:

Pretty sure we saw him taking them over. Or at least, getting some little birds to do stuff. IIRC they were involved in tricking Lancel into doing whatever it was he did before half of King's Landing exploded

The meeting of Jon and Dany was simultaneously quite well done and a bit of a let down. I think I've been waiting for these characters to meet up for so long that nothing could have lived up to my expectation at this point. Anyway, its nice to see them not immediately trust each other but also try to find a compromise- while its a role we've seen Jon in before, this is the first time Dany work at winning over someone instead of immediately gaining their loyalty.

Fast travel:

Spoiler:

It didn't much bother me because everyone was doing some traveling. If you want to be gracious to the show, you can assume the King's Landing scenes happened first then later Jon arrived at Dragonstone where he stayed for a while before the whole "mining for dragon glass" business was hashed out and Bran arrived at Winterfell somewhere in the meantime. In the meantime the Unsullied took a long trip to Casterly Rock where it took them a while to subdue the castle (I know the show presented it as if it happened all in one morning but assume it took them several days at least) which a. gave Euron enough time to catch up to the Unsullied and burn their fleet before they could retreat and b. allowed the Lannister army to march South and defeat the greatly weakened Tyrells who had most of "their" forces side with Randyll Tarly on the Lannister side.

The importance of Sam:

Spoiler:

It's a well-known fact that Sam is the closest thing to GRRM's proxy in the world of the novels. If there is one character that I am sure will survive the events of the series, it is Samwell. I am sure he still has a role left to play and more shocking revelations to uncover in the Citadel although why healing Jorah was such a huge deal, I am not quite sure.

Littlefinger and Varys, on the other hand, I think are left with nothing to do. The former is stripped of the Vale machinations while the latter no long puppeteers (f)Aegon so they are kind of vestigial- left to talk big game but not actually achieve anything.

I'm going to ignore the potential for fast travel. This time there were contextual clues surrounding the main battle that sat better with me than the past episodes. So in general I found the timeline of everything to be more or less plausible, leaning towards "reasonable."

I think the biggest take away from this episode has nothing to do with the big battle. Nothing to do with Dany or Jon or the rest of westeros. It has to deal with a very tiny interaction between Bran and Littlefinger. I'm not going to make any generalizations or anything yet (I do have my own theory, just not ready to present it just yet). But the best interaction was when Littlefinger is trying to be empathetic to Bran and tells him it must be difficult to return amidst such chaos in Westeros. Bran replies "Chaos is a ladder." Littlefinger is very clearly distraught by this response. That's because these are his own words that he spoke to Varys in private in season 1:

Littlefinger wrote:"Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is."

I think this is our first indication that Bran will become a major player (as I have long expected) in replacing Varys and Littlefinger, should he choose to elevate to that level of intervention.

Also, anyone else feel like Jon drew the cave 'paintings' on dragonstone? Just seems so obvious that he did it.

It did not occur to me that Jon could have done that. That would be extremely slick. Unfortunately he does not seem like a slick player.

Bran is slow rolling his awesome. But clearly he knows how that dagger came to be there and Littlefinger is not long for this world. I just hope that Varys' long game triumph over him is done grandly, and not just as a btw.

LE4dGOLEM: What's a Doug?Noc: A larval Doogly. They grow the tail and stinger upon reaching adulthood.

It did not occur to me that Jon could have done that. That would be extremely slick. Unfortunately he does not seem like a slick player.

Bran is slow rolling his awesome. But clearly he knows how that dagger came to be there and Littlefinger is not long for this world. I just hope that Varys' long game triumph over him is done grandly, and not just as a btw.

Episode 4

Spoiler:

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that Bran knows what is going on with Littlefinger. For that matter, he also mentions Sansa's wedding in an earlier episode, which was orchestrated by Littlefinger. I'm going to guess that him giving the dagger to Arya was not just on a whim.

When he first came to Winterfell he also mentioned oh-so-casually "Oh, Jon's not here. Too bad, I have something to talk to him about." I'm assuming that this is not Littlefinger-related but rather due to certain events in Season 6.

So, Daenerys' way of being a good queen is to personally (well, dragonally) destroy food supplies?

trpmb6 wrote:That's because these are his own words that he spoke to Varys in private in season 1:

Ah, thanks for reminding!

Spoiler:

I don't understand why she didn't move her dragon a LITTLE to the left and just roast the entire line of infantry instead. Then you could have just TAKEN the food. How the fuck is she feeding that hoard of Dothraki AND their horses?

I don't understand why she didn't move her dragon a LITTLE to the left and just roast the entire line of infantry instead. Then you could have just TAKEN the food. How the fuck is she feeding that hoard of Dothraki AND their horses?

Spoiler:

Presumably they were quite well supplied prior to their travel across the narrow sea. That being said, they can't be that well supplied at this point. Perhaps they are receiving things from across the sea still.

What if the night king is actually the good guy and he is just trying to save all the people who will undoubtedly die during this winter due to the fact that noone has stockpiled enough food to survive the long winter.

Which part of 'saving' looks like corpses mindlessly marching towards civilians, who have a chance to go west south (well, Jon said they could have the lands directly south of the wall, but no one can stop free folk from going far south or even to Essos individually), to butcher them?

I'm all ears for having the night king be the good guy, but there's a large case against him.

Unrelated: I was relieved to hear Meera say Bran "died in that cave". I don't know whether Sansa and Arya are aware of this, but at least someone has the guts and the level-headedness to note there is no more Bran.

I'd also be very curious about The Night King's motivations and hopefully we'll get some more information by the end of this season. People sort of assume that there is something more there because GRRM writes complex characters (i.e. ones that have actual motivations) but there is little enough indication in the books that the Others are anything more than a force of nature.

One thing I can imagine based on what the show has shown us is that they need humans or human babies to reproduce. Perhaps for whatever reason they think being Other is better than being human- they seem to not age or die so they might even be right, and they are trying to "help" humanity at large. Killing some people in the short term to grant humanity at large immortality might seem reasonable to an immortal creature that considers dying fifty years from now little different than dying today.

I'd also be very curious about The Night King's motivations and hopefully we'll get some more information by the end of this season. People sort of assume that there is something more there because GRRM writes complex characters (i.e. ones that have actual motivations) but there is little enough indication in the books that the Others are anything more than a force of nature.

One thing I can imagine based on what the show has shown us is that they need humans or human babies to reproduce. Perhaps for whatever reason they think being Other is better than being human- they seem to not age or die so they might even be right, and they are trying to "help" humanity at large. Killing some people in the short term to grant humanity at large immortality might seem reasonable to an immortal creature that considers dying fifty years from now little different than dying today.

Spoiler:

But why kill all the people and raise them into an army and the like? Why not actually talk to the people? I mean maybe they did, clearly Crastor knew to leave babies behind for them, unless that was just a happy accident for him. The force of nature point of view unfortunately seems more likely since they don't even try to communicate with people. It's not even clear they can.

The Night King is a being of magic created by the Children of the Forest. One event that still stands out to me is the fact that the Night King was able to see, and even touch, Bran as he was spying on him (I'm unclear if Bran was warging as something near to the Night King or was using a weirdwood tree or something else). Somehow the Night King was able to interact with Bran while Bran was training with the three eyed raven. I suspect he has many other capabilities yet to be seen.

I'm curious, does anyone know if ALL the Children of the Forest have been eliminated now? Could there still be another stronghold out there we don't know of? I can't remember from last season if they said they were the last survivors. It seemed to me that the Children were also immortal given that it was Leaf who created the Night King and Leaf who helps Bran.

Dream Team was fun. There's something unreal about everyone getting together, especially as that scene fully demonstrated how many people murdered each other's friends and/or betrayed each other.

Spoiler:

There is a slight feeling that the "Dream Team" is full of plot-armor characters however. Two characters literally have died already (Joh Snow and Beric). The audience was led to believe that two other characters died, but "they got better". The Hound, and Ser Mormont. Gendry perhaps hasn't died, but he's been missing for like 4-seasons (presumably rowing a boat).

I have a feeling that we're going to be losing a few major characters again in this upcoming fight to capture a White Walker and/or zombie.

We're missing the badass archer however. I wonder what happened with him? (I guess the actor for him wasn't on contract anymore or something)

Its a really awesome assembly in any case. I think "rule of cool" wins me over. Something doesn't quite feel right about the whole setup... but I'd rather not think about it too hard.

Funny how beyond the wall the skies are about clear when we follow the bird's eye perspective, but there's an opaque snow storm when the people on the ground go in. Yes, there's unspecified time in between, but still.

Any idea how well dragons fare in freezing cold? And how well could they take a stab wound from the White Walker's magical weapons?

And I know we've been talking about "teleporting" recently, so lets talk about it again.

Spoiler:

Onion Knight Ser Davos started at Dragonstone, then smuggled Tyrion Lannister into King's Landing, sailed back to Dragonstone, sailed to Eastwatch, and is now North of the Wall.

In one fucking episode.

If you though the teleport of Euron Greyjoy was rich in S7E2, Ser Davos takes the cake. They've got some light-speed thrusters aboard their ships. That's the only way they can get around the sea so damn quickly.

Honorable mentions: Tyrion and Jamie. Who teleport from the battlefield to their respective homes (King's Landing / Dragonstone). The Dothraki Horde: I thought that Euron Greyjoy had naval superiority. But its cool, cause the horde can teleport off the island of Dragonstone and charge at the Lannisters on the mainland.

I mean seriously: Euron Greyjoy literally owns the seas right now. Danny's major problem (I thought anyway) was that her armies couldn't move around the content from her island base. Apparently that wasn't a problem for that last fight...

I think that's what has been bothering me about that episode. They seem to be traveling faster than the fucking raven messaging system.

This episode really poked fun at the more dedicated/theory obsessed fans. Gilly dropped quite the revelation/confirmation bomb and Davos' "I assumed you were still rowing" comment got a chuckle out of me.

About the "teleporting":

Spoiler:

Dragonstone and King's Landing are actually very close together, possibly the two closest named locations in the whole show. The battle from the end of last episode was similarly very near KL so it is perfectly reasonable for Jamie to make it back in a day or less. Eastwatch isn't exactly close to Dragonstone but at least they are on the right side of the continent so it isn't necessarily a long way compared to what has happened before.

On the other hand we last saw the Ironborn fleet at Casterly Rock. If one is inclined to give the show the benefit of the doubt, its perfectly reasonable to assume Euron is still on the opposite side of the continent.

There was a lot of fanservice in this episode. Not a lot actually happened, IMHO.

While I think this is somewhat inevitable (and probably a result of the script deviating from the books), I feel like the recent episodes have stripped a lot of the character and narrative complexity away in service of streamlining plot.

If you though the teleport of Euron Greyjoy was rich in S7E2, Ser Davos takes the cake. They've got some light-speed thrusters aboard their ships. That's the only way they can get around the sea so damn quickly.

Yup, and Winterfell is in a black hole and experiencing massive time dilation.

KnightExemplar wrote:And I know we've been talking about "teleporting" recently, so lets talk about it again.

Spoiler:

Onion Knight Ser Davos started at Dragonstone, then smuggled Tyrion Lannister into King's Landing, sailed back to Dragonstone, sailed to Eastwatch, and is now North of the Wall.

In one fucking episode.

If you though the teleport of Euron Greyjoy was rich in S7E2, Ser Davos takes the cake. They've got some light-speed thrusters aboard their ships. That's the only way they can get around the sea so damn quickly.

Honorable mentions: Tyrion and Jamie. Who teleport from the battlefield to their respective homes (King's Landing / Dragonstone). The Dothraki Horde: I thought that Euron Greyjoy had naval superiority. But its cool, cause the horde can teleport off the island of Dragonstone and charge at the Lannisters on the mainland.

I mean seriously: Euron Greyjoy literally owns the seas right now. Danny's major problem (I thought anyway) was that her armies couldn't move around the content from her island base. Apparently that wasn't a problem for that last fight...

I think that's what has been bothering me about that episode. They seem to be traveling faster than the fucking raven messaging system.

Spoiler:

Euron's fleet should still be on the other side of the continent. It's not clear how much time passed since the Unsullied took Casterly Rock but I presume it's not THAT much. I'd say its probably pretty close to the time Highgarden was sacked. Between the sacking and the Dragon attack is what probably a couple of weeks (travel time, getting all the grain etc). The fight was pretty close to King's landing (a few days I guess) so Euron would be, at best near Dorne, IF he set sail back to the east right away after destroying the Unsullied ships. Dany explicitly mentions she has enough ships to move the Dothraki and their horses around so that's still a fairly massive fleet.

Davos going to and from King's Landing is about a full day's travel in a big ship (I presume the rowboat was just to ferry him from his large ship to land and it stayed more or less out of sight) so there's plenty of time for him to go back and forth there. Now, getting from Dragonstone to Eastwatch by the Sea is MUCH further. That's at least a month's travel by ship. But that happened right at the end so we don't see any impact of that on any of the other stories. This one may become apparent if they actually bring a wight back to King's Landing. It'll have been like 2.5-3 months between Tyrion telling Jaime and Cersei about the potential meeting and when the team from the North can get back.

There was a lot of fanservice in this episode. Not a lot actually happened, IMHO.

Unspoiled, because I don't think this one sentence is really a spoiler.

Anyway, the general structure of GoT seasons is that the penultimate episode is when all the shit goes down. S7E5 felt like it was mostly a setup for the big fight of S7E6 (the penultimate).

S7E7 will be the conclusion, and very rarely is the conclusion "exciting". Maybe they will leave it off on a cliffhanger ending for once (I hope not...). I like how they've resolved things each season so that I'm satiated for a year or so.

What I'm interested in is if the writers of the show do have an internal, consistent and planned-out timetable, but they simply decide not to show any kind of travel that's not relevant, or if they only have an ordered list of events and decide not to care about the logistics of travel. I mean, neither is wrong in of itself and both are valid ways to tell a story. The thing is just that the books cohere to the first and so did the show until it caught up with the books. Did they switch or did they simply cut all travel scenes to shave off screen time (and production cost)?

S7E5:

Spoiler:

Alright, so we have Littlefinger scheming, Arya spying and Littlefinger counter-spying. Now, on reddit at least, there are two major opinions:1.) Arya is leading LF to believe his scheming is successful while she has him figured out already.2.) Arya has already shown she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer (strolling around Braavos) and will get into conflict with Sansa exactly according to what LF lead her to believe.Honestly, I can't tell which one I believe in. Both sounds reasonable from a certain perspective.

raudorn wrote:What I'm interested in is if the writers of the show do have an internal, consistent and planned-out timetable, but they simply decide not to show any kind of travel that's not relevant, or if they only have an ordered list of events and decide not to care about the logistics of travel. I mean, neither is wrong in of itself and both are valid ways to tell a story. The thing is just that the books cohere to the first and so did the show until it caught up with the books. Did they switch or did they simply cut all travel scenes to shave off screen time (and production cost)?

Despite my complaints, I'm actually cool if they don't care about the logistics of travel at this point. It was a "nice to have" part of GoT, but writers have deadlines and I understand that these sorts of details might require more work than they're really worth.

S7E5:

Spoiler:

Alright, so we have Littlefinger scheming, Arya spying and Littlefinger counter-spying. Now, on reddit at least, there are two major opinions:1.) Arya is leading LF to believe his scheming is successful while she has him figured out already.2.) Arya has already shown she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer (strolling around Braavos) and will get into conflict with Sansa exactly according to what LF lead her to believe.Honestly, I can't tell which one I believe in. Both sounds reasonable from a certain perspective.

Spoiler:

There's also one last character at play here: Bran. I dunno if Bran cares about the "worldly" matters of his sisters, but if Bran could start telling some of those secrets to Arya and Sansa, then the drama can be resolved.

Bran seems to be pulling a "Dr. Manhattan" thing though and may not care enough to fix the problem.

Gendry mentions to Jon in this episode that he grew up on stories of their fathers fighting together... but I have a feeling like Gendry didn't know that Robert was his father until midway through season 3ish (I know in the books he doesn't figure it out for awhile). Is this correct? Been awhile since I watched the early seasons.

raudorn wrote:What I'm interested in is if the writers of the show do have an internal, consistent and planned-out timetable, but they simply decide not to show any kind of travel that's not relevant, or if they only have an ordered list of events and decide not to care about the logistics of travel.

I think its a mix of the two but much closer to the former than people give it credit for. The really bad out of place teleportation happened in the earliest seasons with Cat and Littlefinger being especially egregious examples- at those times most plot threads were obviously getting scenes days apart while these character flitted around the continent willy-nilly. Nowadays I don't think they have it all written out (e.g. "Now Jon travels to Eastwatch by ship for 3 weeks") but if anyone cares to do so, a reasonable timeline can be made. With Cersei, Dany and Sansa ruling while Jon mines, scenes can be a few days or a few months apart without looking different.

My theory is that the problem people have isn't so much with the logistics as it is with all the time skips which aren't indicated in any way. The show never indicated how much time was passing between scenes but that didn't bother people when the answers was "typically a few days or even hours." Now the answer is "several weeks or maybe even a few months" multiple times every episode.

I have a bone to pick with the Winterfell developments though.

Spoiler:

Jon, Bran and Arya might not be getting perfectly executed development but all three are on their own trajectories obviously becoming better at what they are trying to be. On the other hand Sans seems to be getting shafted once again and I find that very disappointing. Really, I can't quite figure out what is happening with her this season exactly.

She repeatedly and openly questions Jon which... ok, he's open to criticism but she never sufficiently backs up her arguments and never provides an alternative course of action. Davos, Tyrion, Jamie all serve similar advisory roles but they all give actual advice while Sansa, while admitting something must be done, never really provides constructive advice.

She seems to be doing a passable job of managing Winterfell for the most part except during her stewardship the Northern lords have gone from unified enthusiastic support for Jon to openly talking bout rebellion... is she unaware of this? Aware but unable to control them? Happy with the process but not personally responsible? Making a power play and subtly turning them against Jon herself? Aware Littlefinger is turning them to her side and uncertain what to do about it? Letting LF play out his hand so she can counter him? I honestly can't tell but I fear its going to turn out that LF did successfully turn both Sansa and Arya against each only for Bran to drop some kind of revelation that unites them which... well, for Arya I can accept it since she doesn't know anything about court intrigue or LF but Sansa ought to know better.

Now one can say she is doing the administrative work of managing the North's preparation which is a crucial and obviously time consuming task that she is obviously managing well. Isn't that enough competence? And, yeah, I guess but were those the lessons that KL and LF taught her?

I have a bone to pick with the Winterfell developments though.[spoiler]Jon, Bran and Arya might not be getting perfectly executed development but all three are on their own trajectories obviously becoming better at what they are trying to be. On the other hand Sans seems to be getting shafted once again and I find that very disappointing. Really, I can't quite figure out what is happening with her this season exactly.

She repeatedly and openly questions Jon which... ok, he's open to criticism but she never sufficiently backs up her arguments and never provides an alternative course of action. Davos, Tyrion, Jamie all serve similar advisory roles but they all give actual advice while Sansa, while admitting something must be done, never really provides constructive advice.

She seems to be doing a passable job of managing Winterfell for the most part except during her stewardship the Northern lords have gone from unified enthusiastic support for Jon to openly talking bout rebellion... is she unaware of this? Aware but unable to control them? Happy with the process but not personally responsible? Making a power play and subtly turning them against Jon herself? Aware Littlefinger is turning them to her side and uncertain what to do about it? Letting LF play out his hand so she can counter him? I honestly can't tell but I fear its going to turn out that LF did successfully turn both Sansa and Arya against each only for Bran to drop some kind of revelation that unites them which... well, for Arya I can accept it since she doesn't know anything about court intrigue or LF but Sansa ought to know better.

Now one can say she is doing the administrative work of managing the North's preparation which is a crucial and obviously time consuming task that she is obviously managing well. Isn't that enough competence? And, yeah, I guess but were those the lessons that KL and LF taught her?

Re:Winterfell

Spoiler:

I think what probably would have benefited this plotline would be to have had the White Walkers invade by this point. Create a real sense of urgency. I kind of feel that the whole point of the White Walker storyline ought to have been that the people of Westeroes aren't remotely prepared for them, so Winter shouldn't be holding off endlessly until they are. Don't give them the chance to mine dragonglass and make weapons and build up their reserves... that's what they should have been doing all summer instead of dickering on about the Iron Throne. Show the consequences of them having failed to do those things and failing to prepare properly, and force the characters to make desperate decisions instead of dull ones. If Sansa had consequential decisions to make, then it would have made her arc a lot more interesting.

Gendry mentions to Jon in this episode that he grew up on stories of their fathers fighting together... but I have a feeling like Gendry didn't know that Robert was his father until midway through season 3ish (I know in the books he doesn't figure it out for awhile). Is this correct? Been awhile since I watched the early seasons.

Spoiler:

To be fair, they were national heroes so any kid might have been interested in these stories. I don't remember either if Gendry knew about his ancestry early in the show.

Point of Interest: how long (in weeks, months, years, whatever) is each summer and winter? Does a whole generation pass between each one?

(I have seen a handful of episodes from season 3(?))

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

Winter in Westeros, like the other seasons, varies in length with every occurrence. It could last for a few months (short winters), and up to a few years (long winters). The legendary period called the Long Night, when the Others first arrived supposedly happened during a winter that lasted a whole generation.

Winter in Westeros, like the other seasons, varies in length with every occurrence. It could last for a few months (short winters), and up to a few years (long winters). The legendary period called the Long Night, when the Others first arrived supposedly happened during a winter that lasted a whole generation.

Neat neat, thanks.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

Winter in Westeros, like the other seasons, varies in length with every occurrence. It could last for a few months (short winters), and up to a few years (long winters). The legendary period called the Long Night, when the Others first arrived supposedly happened during a winter that lasted a whole generation.

Looking at some of the stuff on awoiaf I think generation may be misleading; the long night seems to have been a lifetime, such that an entire generation lived and died during it (whereas a generation would usually suggest the time between birth of a generation and the birth of their children).

Gendry mentions to Jon in this episode that he grew up on stories of their fathers fighting together... but I have a feeling like Gendry didn't know that Robert was his father until midway through season 3ish (I know in the books he doesn't figure it out for awhile). Is this correct? Been awhile since I watched the early seasons.

This bothered me too. But I managed to figure out an explanation.

Spoiler:

Gendry grew up on stories of King Robert's battles because he lived in King's Landing. Later in season 3ish (right before he started rowing), he learned about his king's blood and that he was a bastard son of King Robert.

Funny story: now that R+L=J is confirmed, Gendry isn't quite correct that their fathers "fought together". More like... against each other (Rhaegar vs Robert)